


Brother of Mine

by tiger_moran



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes (Downey films), Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, References to Homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-19
Updated: 2013-08-19
Packaged: 2017-12-24 00:50:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/933164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiger_moran/pseuds/tiger_moran
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the prompt: The Professor learns that his brother, the army one, is coming to visit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Brother of Mine

  Moran enters the study without knocking, cigarette jammed in the corner of his mouth, sauntering in as if he owns the place. The definite air of gloom within the room however quickly brings him to a halt and puts an end to anything which he had intended to say or do. He removes his cigarette and regards Moriarty, seated behind his desk but with his chair turned around so that he stares out of the window.

  “Professor?” Moran says softly, taking a hesitant step towards the desk. “You all right sir?”

   “Brotherhood, Moran,” Moriarty answers without turning around. “The fraternal connection.”

   “Sir?”

   “What a truly dreadful thing that is at times.”

   “I don’t understand, sir.”

    Moriarty turns his chair back around and peers at Moran intently over steepled fingers. “My brother.”

   “That would be, ah, er… James or, er…?” Moran has never fully understood why Moriarty’s parents decided to give all three of their sons the same Christian name.

   “James, yes; _Colonel_ James Moriarty. If it were Jamie perhaps my mood would not be so black now.”

    “Why, what’s happened?” Moran slips into the empty chair opposite the professor and puts his cigarette back between his lips.

    Moriarty raps his knuckles upon a letter which lies on his desktop. “He wishes to visit us, tomorrow.”

    Moran very nearly inhales his fag-end. “Visit us?” he squeaks between coughs. “But I thought he hates you?”

    “He does, or at least he believes me to be bringing the name of Moriarty into disrepute with my sinful ways.” The professor pulls a wry face. “Of course, he suspected me of committing sodomy long before I actually ever did so. Simply because I, unlike him, did not chase after anything and everything in skirts.”

    “Then why…?”

    “One would assume to see for himself the full extent of my heinous activities, and to see _you_ , Moran.”

    “Me?”

    “Oh come now, Sebastian. Two bachelor men living together? Perhaps others may view us as no more than two old and not especially wealthy friends sharing lodgings for the sake of economy and practicality but to my brother… we are living in sin; two depraved fiends committing gross acts of indecency together, and he would think this even if in reality you and I had never so much as laid a finger upon each other. He already has a low opinion of me and no doubt he now has a yearning to see precisely what manner of man I have taken up with.”

    Moran stubs out his cigarette in the ashtray now, it having rather lost its appeal. He definitely looks a little more pale than usual suddenly. “But… won’t he expose us, then?”

    “No, he would not do anything to bring any further disrepute upon our family name.”

    “Then why…?”

   “So that he may privately condemn me further, and you too. Of course the fact that you departed from the army under something of a cloud has surely further put a black mark against you in his book.”

   “Well… can’t you just tell him not to come?”

    “That would merely make him even more determined to come, to discover what we are trying to hide.”

    “Hmm.” Moran gets up out of his chair and moves around the desk, re-seating himself upon its edge now, so that he sits almost directly in front of Moriarty. “Professor… I could kill him, if you wanted.”

    Moriarty’s gaze meets his, and he chuckles, just a little. It is a joke, of course, and yet… they both know that Moran _could,_ and would, if Moriarty asked him to.

    Moran’s love for and loyalty to the professor is such that he would indeed do anything to protect him, but not simply to protect him bodily; to protect his mind too. A threat to Moriarty’s happiness is almost as much of a danger in Moran’s eyes as a would-be assassin’s blade or bullet or bomb, and he has not seen the professor look so downcast in a long time. Although he cares not at all for his elder brother, Moriarty still cannot, it seems, help but take Colonel Moriarty’s utter contempt for him and his way of life to heart.

    “Sebastian.” Moriarty reaches up and slides his hand around the back of Moran’s head, tangling his fingers in his hair as he draws Moran’s face close to his. “My dear Moran.” He kisses Moran’s lips briefly, and then he sighs. “Tempting as it is to remove my brother from my life permanently, I will have to decline your kind offer.”

    “Well…” Moran seems disappointed by this. “We shall confront him together then.” He cups Moriarty’s face lightly, stroking his cheek with his thumb. “I don’t care what he thinks of me, or of us.”

   “I suspected,” Moriarty remarks, managing another fond little smile, “that you would say as much.”

   “Well I don’t; there ain’t nothing wrong with what we do together and if he says otherwise he can go shove his opinions up his ar- up his backside, sir.”

   “As ever, Sebastian, you have a most charming way of expressing things.” Moriarty yanks him off the edge of the desk completely now, so that Moran falls onto his lap. “You are right though, of course. I cannot think why I allow my brother’s opinions to bother me so.”

   Moran looks at Moriarty as he says this, making no response, but he knows. Of course he knows that just because your blood relations may be unspeakably awful and do nothing but hurt and censure you, that does not mean that you can easily cast them aside nor lightly shrug off their words. He had never really expected the professor, who so shuns most emotional attachments and close relationships, to be the same, but the revelation that even he is not immune to this… it is an unexpected occurrence, but not a wholly unwelcome one. It is always intriguing to discover further new points of similarity between him and his lover.

   He kisses Moriarty then in place of telling him this – a longer, deeper kiss now, although one done more as an act of comfort and reassurance than as an act of passion or a prelude to anything more. When it is over they remain with their foreheads touching, so close, with Moriarty’s hands resting against Moran’s hips.

    “Moran,” he murmurs. “I believe I will require all your strength as well as my own to make my brother’s visit tomorrow tolerable.”

    “You shall have it, Professor,” Moran assures him, because being Moriarty’s right hand man, being _his_ , it’s about more than standing by him when he plots and schemes and meets with everyone from the highest in the land to the lowest of criminal scum. It’s about being there, always, when the professor is happy; when he’s stricken with melancholy; when he’s hurting, and when he must endure a meeting with a brother he hates yet cannot quite bring himself to fully cast off.

    “Just promise me one thing, Moran,” Moriarty says.

    “Anything sir.”

    “Don’t hit him. I know what you are like; I know how your temper may be stirred, but I cannot have you engaging in a bout of fisticuffs with my brother over some misguided notion about protecting my honour.” Moriarty says this not without some affection, but his words are fully serious.

   “Fisticuffs?” Moran says incredulously, grinning at him. “I don’t do _fisticuffs_ , sir, if I was going to hit him I’d knock his bloody block off.”

    “Which is _precisely_ what I do not want to occur. I won’t see you being arrested for assaulting him.”

    “All right,” Moran says, though perhaps with some reluctance. “No hitting him.”

    “Not even if you are provoked?”

    “Not even then.”

    “Good boy.” Moriarty leans forward and gives him another light peck on the lips. “I knew I could rely on you.”


End file.
